Divestment campaign meets UVM bureaucracy

Dec. 11, 2012

Written by

Free Press Staff Writer

Environmental activists at the University of Vermont want swift action on their proposal to divest from fossil-fuel companies, but it was clear from their first formal encounter with UVM’s decision-making process that they’re not going to get it.

Members of Vermont Student Climate Culture made a presentation Tuesday to the Socially Responsible Investing Advisory Council, which is charged with making recommendations to the vice president of finance, who in turn advises the Board of Trustees, the ultimate authority on UVM investment decisions. Among the students’ specific requests was that the Board of Trustees implement, by February, a plan to eliminate all endowment holdings from 200 specified fossil-fuel companies. The next board meeting is Feb. 8-9.

The students were informed that council is not scheduled to take up the proposal before Feb. 20, when a “town meeting” will be held for members of the UVM community to make any and all endowment recommendations. After that, council chairwoman Claire Burlingham told them, the council will likely spend most of the semester researching one or two emergent issues — one of which presumably will be fossil-fuel divestment — before reporting to Richard Cate, vice president for finance. The council’s 10 members include students, faculty, staff and administrators.

“It was certainly disappointing,” said Kerry Wilson, one of three presenters. “We do want to take action now. We’re trying to work within the system.”

Members of Vermont Student Climate Culture, formed at UVM in September, passed out copies of a 21-page paper (with appendices and footnotes) spelling out why the university should get rid of all holdings in fossil-fuel companies in its endowment fund. Apart from addressing what they portrayed as the impending disaster of human-induced climate change, the students said, divestment would enhance UVM’s prestige and make it a leader in a movement spreading among colleges throughout the country. Not doing so, they argued, would undercut UVM’s presumed pre-eminence in its commitment to the environment.

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“Having investments in fossil fuel companies and demonstrating accountable environmental leadership are mutually exclusive,” the paper states. Divestment is necessary, the paper argues, for the university to be true to its values, mission and vision.

UVM’s endowment was valued at $340.9 million at the end of August. The value in fossil-fuel companies is difficult to determine, Cate has said, because many of the endowment holdings are in hedge funds and mutual funds. A U.S. equity account that’s worth about 24 percent of the total value includes shares in Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and assorted other oil and gas companies, as well as shares in dozens of companies in other sectors.

In addition to eliminating all holdings from 200 delineated companies, the group called for divestment from the Blackrock All Cap Energy Fund, which comprises mostly oil and gas companies, and freezing all new investments in those 200 companies.

To avert a dangerous rise in global temperature over the next century, Wilson said, a large share of existing fossil-fuel resources have to remain in the ground. Divestment initiatives are under way at more than 150 schools, she said.

UVM, she said, “can be at the heart of this movement.”

Dan Cmejla, another presenter, said the group has consulted investment advisors who can recommend new investments to replace the fossil-fuel companies. He suggested the endowment could grow even more robustly after divestment and thus become a model for other institutions.

Elley Vanderlinde said divesting from fossil-fuel companies, which she called “some of the worst companies the world has ever known,” would help give UVM “a competitive edge” in admissions and burnish its brand as “a leading sustainable university.”

Several members of the advisory council praised the student group for the work and research that went into the paper, but none of them commented on the substance of the recommendations. The overall tenor of the session was cordial, not confrontational.